FOIA Request Shows Which Printer Companies Cooperated With US Government 355
New submitter Dave_Minsky writes "The U.S. Secret Service responded to a FOIA request on Monday that reveals the names of the printer companies that cooperate with the government to identify and track potential counterfeiters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed in 2005 that the U.S. Secret Service was in cahoots with selected laser printer companies to identify and track printer paper using tiny microscopic dots encoded into the paper. The tiny, yellow dots — less than a millimeter each — are printed in a pattern over each page and are only viewable with a blue light, a magnifying glass or a microscope. The pattern of dots is encodes identifiable information including printer model, and time and location where the document was printed." Easy enough to avoid government dots; just don't buy printers from Canon, Brother, Casio, HP, Konica, Minolta, Mita, Ricoh, Sharp, or Xerox.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
The are LOTS of flaws in your agument. Prehaps the easiest to explain is what happens if the is a revolution in your country and previous 'free-expression' suddenly lands you in jail?
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
The are LOTS of flaws in your agument. Prehaps the easiest to explain is what happens if the is a revolution in your country and previous 'free-expression' suddenly lands you in jail?
Let's imagine I have a home printer that prints these microdots. I use it for printing birthday cards, kids' homework, letters to my bank, and other miscellany. If there's a revolution and any of these things become illegal, I've got bigger problems than being tracked by my printer.
As a further note, right now there's no way to trace that serial number to me. Generally speaking, tracing a serial number will get it to the store that sold it to me and not much further. For larger office devices (the stuff I work with in my day job) there's no way a home user would have it, but we could track it to the end user (customer) in theory. That however would only give us the company, not the individual user (unless that company themselves had a tracking system for their users, and then how is that OUR fault?)
Yeh, I'd prefer it if these microdots didn't exist, but I've yet to see a convincing argument of their actual danger.
Defective by design (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
And for all we know there is already a database out there that just links yellow dots to names and it only takes a few calls to know who leaked the incriminating data.
If there was, the following conversation would not have taken place:
That's only happened once, around 6 or 7 years ago. Same current employer, different country. It may be that such a database exists in the US for example, but I've never worked there so couldn't say. It definitely doesn't exist in Australia where I used to work otherwise they wouldn't have called asking that question.
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do me a favor.
Go down to the guys in the driver dept, and hand out a few swift kicks to the balls.
Oh, I would SO love to... Sadly, the main driver devs are sitting in Japan and our guys here in Europe only do customisations and localisation - they don't deserve the kick.
On the plus side, if you're located in Europe and have a company (even just a one-person company) with a non-"freemail" email address, sign up (for free, but with NDA agreement) to our Developer Support Portal [konicaminolta.eu] and you can get all our PDL (PJL, PCL, PS) specs to make your own driver. Wait a few months and there may be some even cooler stuff there for doing your own drivers much more easily (sorry, can't confirm that definitely right now).
Any questions, post on the forums there and I'll answer as best I can! (or pay for a developer support contract and get guaranteed full technical answers to questions as well as a lot more cool resources)
An Old Dispute (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Paranoid much? Seriously, they've been doing that with handwriting and typewriters since, roughly forever. Then there's any fingerprints or DNA you might leave on the paper to consider too. And your license plate number when they surveil the parking lot of the post office where the documents were mailed from. And checking your hard drive for the digital files, and your trash for draft copies, and your email for related writings, and your bookcase/ereader for related reading. Doing textual analysis on emails and other postings on the internet... Etc... etc...
Consider that the Unabomber was caught because his brother recognized his writing style. The Lindbergh kidnapper by comparing handwriting. Albert Fish because he used a unique paper... (Huh, Wikipedia to the rescue again - they have an entire article [wikipedia.org] on this, found while researching cases.)
Seriously, acting like this represents some unique threat or certain nail in your coffin where there is no other is simply ludicrous.
Re:lol (Score:2, Interesting)
I've lost track, is Glenn Beck still predicting hyperinflation any day now?
Actually I shouldn't be too glib about inflation because I am somewhat worried about it. But so far the extra dollars created by the Fed have mainly just offset the dollars that vanished when Wall Street companies pulled back on extending loans back and forth to each other. True or false?
Re:lol (Score:2, Interesting)
If we're going to test burnable human waste, why not use the whole of a politician, rather than just his excrement?
cheers,
Re:lol (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lol (Score:5, Interesting)
China has their currency pegged to ours (other countries too, but China is the one that matters).
That means we sort of share a monetary policy. We print money, it causes inflation in China as they are forced to also print money to maintain the peg.
If China lets their currency float then we see the pent up inflation hit us as all their products double in price (and their bank reserves of US bonds halve in value). Shock to both economies. Double plus ungood.
But the peg needs to move faster. Eventual float.
My only question: Where is the arbitrage opportunity?
Re:What's the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)